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Betty Boop Girl Will Preach Here
Religion and show business have a great deal in common according to Ann Werner Rothschild, an ordained Protestant minister who will be remembered by many here as the. original Betty Boop gal of stage and screen fame during the 1930s. A vibrant 77-pound blue-eyed woman who stands 58 inches tall, "Little Ann Little" as she's known to her friends, came to Fort Myers in 1951 after being commissioned by the Unity Village School near Kansas City, to work with the struggling young local movement. Sunday she will return to preach a guest sermon for the now thriving Unity Church of Christianity at Grand and Lafayette Streets a pulpit she left 10 years ago following her marriage to Joe Rothschild. "A good performer," said Mrs. Rothschild, "is like a good preacher. He has to reach out to his audience and lift them up above their mundane problems to the realm of joy and love and hope. Like the performer, a preacher has to give abundantly of himself before he can relate to his congregation. Without a receptive audience, a performer dies inside; without a strong congregation a pastor is lost." Mrs. Rothschild can't be bothered with titles. "I've always hated to be referred to as "Reverend", she said. "After all, why should we ministers be placed on some kind of pedestal by our congregations? We're merely God's servants just as performers are in the business to serve people to give them a little happiness and from time to time open their eyes to the evil and injustice in the world to get them to love each other." Mrs Rothschild's theatrical career began "way back in the 1920s" when she joined the Greenwich Village Follies in New York City. Soon she was creating her own comedy song and dance routines and was receiving offers to appear in stage shows throughout the country. By the middle 30s, following starring roles in movies produced by Hollywood's Paramount Pictures, the name Betty Boop became a household word in America. Betty Boop cartoons and Betty Boop dolls were the rage. By 1945, Mrs. Rothschild had retired from movie and stage appearances and was operating her own Betty Boop Studio in St. Petersburg. Among the students she coached in acting, singing and dancing was Carroll Baker who has since appeared in a number of Hollywood's movie spectaculars. "I remember her as a sensitive lovely girl," recalled Mrs. Rothschild. "I taught her everything I knew about show business and after three years of vigorous coaching told her she was on her own." Unable to be "lukewarm" about anything, she decided to study for the ministry and enrolled in the Unity Village School in Kansas City, Mo. Still keeping her St. Petersburg studio in operation, she made periodic trips to the Missouri theological center and kept up a lively correspondence course with the school for the next nine years. "I became well known in the prisons around Kansas City," laughed Mrs. Rothschild, who went on to explain that each time she went out west to study religion, she was invariably asked to entertain the prisoners at county and city jails. In 1951 Mrs. Rothschild was sent by the Unity Village school to the Fort Myers Unity Center (at that time located on First Street) for on-the-job training. By 1954 she was an ordained minister in the Unity Church. Under her direction the present location was found for the local church in August, 1952. Dismayed to discover that Unity teachings were often misunderstood by groups in the community, she began a weekly program entitled "The Unity Viewpoint" over WINK radio station. Mrs. Rothschild met her second husband while ministering at the Fort Myers church and soon after their marriage resigned from active ministry. She lost her husband 10 months ago when he succumbed to the crippling pain of Parkinson's disease. "God has been good to me," said Mrs. Rothschild. "I have so many memories to look back on some are sad, but then that's life and I've always tried to live it to the fullest." Apparently she's still going strong. Mrs. Ann Werner Rothschild, an ordained minister in the Unity Church of Christianity, and the original Betty Boop show girl, recalls the similarities between her days in show business and the ministry. Listening tentatively is El Nino, her seven-year-old Chihuahua. Category:News Category:Newspapers Category:1970 Category:Little Ann Little